First of all, Mother, you would love the Musee Marmottan. It's basically just a museum of Monet and friends. It has so much of his waterlilies and other stuff he painted at Giverny. It was really fun, and there's a lot of neat stuff there.

Okay, about the trip to Lyon. It was wonderful! Lyon is a gorgeous and surprisingly uber-historic city, and I would highly recommend a trip there, if anyone's thinking of random places to go in France. ;)

I was supposed to meet Kelly at the train station on Friday at the ticket window; however, we quickly learned that Kelly has trouble following signs. Sooo... we had to cut in line, just like I did two weeks ago when I went to Reims, and I made a lot of French people very angry. I really need to try to not let this be a trend. Anyway, we made the train, and we found seats together, and that was good and all. Cheese and crackers and Bueno bars are excellent snacks on trains.

(Have I talked about Bueno bars yet? They're these amazing candy bars that are kind of like large kit kat bars in that they have a wafer-like middle covered in chocolate, except that they're also filled with hazelnut cream. I think they're the best candy bars in the world. No joke.)

Anyway, we arrived in Lyon around 9pm, and we decided to go eat dinner first so that the restaurants wouldn't close, and I am glad we did. We learned, when we finished dinner around 11 or 1130, that it's a freaking half-hour walk all uphill, very steep uphill mind you, on windy cobblestone road that's dimly lit, while we're carrying all of our stuff, and my cell phone has no battery and Kelly's cell phone has no minutes. Good going, us. Luckily, we weren't attacked (which is good, because we wouldn't have been able to run anywhere), and we did manage to make it to our hostel safely just after midnight. It was a nice hostel, we were in a six-person room, but no one was there when we arrived. Some old French lady arrived shortly after us, and the only problem with her was the window wars. Kelly and random French lady had a good time silently arguing over whether or not to keep the window open.

The next morning, we learned the fun of the shower. It was a random button on the wall, so you had no control over temperature. You just pushed the button, and the shower turned on for about 20 seconds or so. Then you had to push it again... and again. It was odd, shall we say. It had uber-high water pressure, which was wonderful for washing your hair, but really terrible for washing your face. Also, the sink in the bathroom had similar water pressure and pretty much gave you a shower every time you used it anyway. Also, we were basically-virgin hostelers, and we didn't realize we needed to bring our own towels. However, in my own defense, previous hostels either have had towels, let you rent towels, or tell you to bring your own. This hostel had none of the above, we so kinda air-dried. Yum.

Then I discovered my new favorite thing for breakfast: French bread with nutella and honey. Mmm... good. Then we set out to discover the city. We started at the tourist office, which is always a good idea, and we purchased city cards, just like we did in Reims. They're cheap, and they get you everything free, including transportation, for 2 days. It was great. We started with a walking tour of La Croix-Rousse, which is the silk industry area on the north hill. It was really cool. We learned a lot about the history of silk coming to Lyon from Italy and China before that. We also just learned about the basic history and geography of the city. It was surprisingly really interesting. We also got to see a silk-printing workshop. It was really cool how they have to use different frames for each color, so if they have a pattern with 38 colors, you need 38 frames. And the frames have to be placed exactly. It was neato. They also showed us these passageways called "traboules." It's a Lyon-specific word, and it means a passageway that leads you from one street to another, if it goes back to the same street then it's not a traboule. So Lyon has a lot of these, and they were created because they live on wicked large, steep hills with two huge rivers at the bottoms, so they decided it would be easier and more efficient if they could cross through people houses to get up and down the hill. So yea, they were really neat.

To top off our visit of the silk-making industry, we visited the Musee de Tissus, which was a cool museum showing all the different fabrics from different cultures, focusing on those from Lyon, mainly silk. It was pretty cool.

Then I ate the largest sandwich of my life. Correction: I tried to eat the largest sandwich of my life. It was delicious, but it was ginormous. There were French fries inside my sandwich! It was like a huge panini stuffed with like Greek seasoned chicken kebab and French fries! Whoda thunk, eh?

Then we moved on to our second walking tour of the day: Vieux Lyon (Old Lyon). It's at the bottom of the west hill, and it's... some centuries old? It's pretty cool. We started in the Place Bellecour, which has been a really historical place throughout many centuries again. I think a bunch of people were shot there, particularly during the Resistance in WWII. Then we crossed la Saone river on Pont Bonaparte to get to the Cathedrale Saint-Jean, which has a cool astronomical clock. My guidebook said that it reenacts the annunciation every hour, but it definitely did not. Some things moved and it rang, and it was very unexciting. However, the clock itself is cool, because it does everything. It shows you the time, plus where the sun is in the sky, and the date, and all the Catholic holidays from now until eternity. I was like... I bet I could make the mathematical equation to figure out all this stuff, and then I felt smart.

Then we wandered through a ton more traboules, and it was fun. Then we decided to go to the top of the hill, called Fourviere, where the old Roman ruins are. Yes, Lyon is that old. There are some old Roman amphitheatres that we wandered through, and then we went to the Musee Gallo-Romain and saw even more really really old stuff. It was cool, mostly because I didn't know that Lyon had that much coolness surrounding it.

So then we wandered back down the hill to the center of the peninsula and went to happy hour at a place called the Tavern of the Drunken Parrot. It was nice and sketchy, and we were the only ones there, but the drinks were cheap. They specialized in flavored rum shots, and they had tons of flavors. It was awesome... until really crazy man started harassing us. At least he didn't hit us like he did one guy. Oh crazy people. We were so full from lunch that we didn't want a three-course meal for dinner. So we had pizza and Haagen-Dazs. We were tired. Furthermore, we wanted to get back up the hill before the funiculaire closed at 10pm. And we did.

However, by the time we got back, shortly after 10pm, our room was full, and everyone was asleep! Imagine that. Young people asleep at 10pm on a Saturday night! What a lame place, eh? So we hung out in the lobby and checked our email for about an hour. Then we woke everyone up when we went to bed. Oh well. It happens when you're in a dorm.

Next morning, we headed all the way across town (across both rivers to the east side) into modern Lyon, to see the Centre de la Resistance et de la Deportation. It was a really cool museum about the Resistance movement in France, particularly in Lyon, during WWII. Apparently, Jean Moulin was arrested in Lyon, and it was a big center for a lot of the Resistance. It went through the history of everything, and it talked a lot about other stuff too, like the concentration camps and the sociologies of people and why they did what they did during the war. It was really interesting. I think the most disturbing part of the museum was a book with initial blueprints for the gas chambers. It had several different versions, each explaining the pros and cons of each before they decided on which one to use, reasons such as this chamber camouflages better as a shower room, so people won't revolt before entering, etc. I can sometimes understand how a few people, like Hitler and a few others could have been so crazy and demented to do this. However, I can't wrap my head around the fact that so many of these people, including architects and builders who were probably sound of mind went through this process so rationally. It was a heavy museum basically. It's overwhelming even now as I think about it.

We had pastries for lunch to make us feel better about life. Then we headed over to the Institut Lumiere, which is where the Lumiere brothers basically invented cinematography. There's a whole museum inside their old house with the first video camera they ever made and a film screening room where you could watch some of the first movies every made. It was really cool, and I really didn't know that much about them, so I definitely learned a lot.

Then we headed back over to the top of the Fourviere to see the Basilica Notre-Dame de Fourviere. It's a huge 19th century church, with lots of amazing mosaics inside. It has one mosaic depicting the life of Jeanne d'Arc. I really don't even know how to describe the amazingness of this church. It really was unlike anything I had ever seen. Italian churches are gorgeous with all of their sculpted marble and paintings from the Renaissance and earlier, but this was just stunning. It was cool. And outside, there was a gorgeous view of the city, because we were so high up. Right near there, there is also a random TV tower that sort of looks like the Eiffel Tower. It was... random. Then we wandered down the hill through a large rose garden. Though it wasn't very cool, you know, cause it's winter and all, and everything's dead. Oh well. We went back to the hostel to pick up our stuff before we left. I hung out with the hostel's cat, named Callie, for awhile. She was absolutely adorable and the friendliest cat I've ever met. I walked up to her, and she jumped into my arms. I guess you gotta be friendly if you live in a hostel.

Then Kelly and I managed to not miss our train home, and we ate more cheese and crackers and Bueno bars. Yum. Some kind lady switched seats with me so that I could sit with Kelly. And it wasn't like I was a few seats away. She moved two whole cars away to accommodate us. I wish I could have expressed my gratitude better. Damn French language. Ugh.

Anyway, it was a good time. My host parents were also gone this weekend to St. Jean-de-Luz, which is near the Spain-France border. They didn't get back until Monday night, but they brought my macarons from the area. They're really good.

This week I have a lot of work, so it's probably not going to very exciting, so I'm probably not going to update. Wish me luck with my first papers and exams. I'll definitely need it.